


Sweetest Sight Ever Seen

by acacia59



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 17:44:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacia59/pseuds/acacia59
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A score of brave souls sail the milky seas, but what will become of those they leave behind? The year is 2139 on an Earth whose inhabitants never postulated the Theory of Relativity but have achieved near-light speed travel…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweetest Sight Ever Seen

***

 

_September 1, 2139_

 

The sky was that impossible blue that only seemed to happen a few rare days in fall when the air was just starting to hold the nighttime chill through midday and the sun sifting through the changing leaves took on a particularly warm, golden hue. Gazing upward, one could easily forget one’s balance and feel as if one was just a single misstep from plunging away from the earth’s surface and into the swiftly deepening blue through to the black of space.

 

Freddie took a deep breath. He imagined that he could feel the cold air move through his sinuses, into his trachea and then fill the remote branches of his lungs with an expansive biting fullness. It was the perfect sort of day for an artist and nearly made his fingers itch to pick up a camera or a brush. The view from where he stood was unbelievable beautiful. It almost made one forget the crowded slums and dirty city streets that they had transported past to get here. But a new artistic endeavor wasn’t the reason he was here.

 

Past the knot of media types and official-looking barricades, a small group of uniformed people waved to the gathered crowd. The family section was roped off in velvet, but Freddie found it more pleasant to be here on this little hilltop under a picturesque copse of birch trees. He wasn’t normally inclined to solitude, but then, today was not a normal day.

 

Dwarfing the crowd, the spaceship loomed like a poorly done special effect, rising from the field of engineered high-yield corn with a cold menace. He knew what the electronic news bulletins were saying, that this machine constituted the greatest achievement of mankind, that today was a moment that would go down in history, that would be hailed in legend for millennia. All that he could muster up in emotion as he watched the tangle of technologically advanced alloy that was far larger than any of the thousands of skyscrapers that cluttered the city behind him was a dull throbbing ache of loneliness. His two best friends were going to be getting on that ship and leaving him behind on this dying planet. He blinked hard as a mousy brown head caught the sun and turned from the crowd to face the long ramp leading to the airlock. His two best friends…and his soulmate, his heart, one of three people he loved more than life itself.

 

Freddie was a man prone to hysterics. He could pitch an overdramatic temper tantrum over a chipped piece of Riedel stemware. But on this day, the most momentous of his life, with a terrible sense of foreboding creeping over him, he found that all he could do was to fall backward into the grass and lose himself in the unending sky. The sky was so very blue and emotionless. A single pigeon flew across his field of vision.

 

In the distance, the ship rose on a pillar of flame and smoke, at once heartbreakingly beautiful and very, very terrible.

 

***

 

“Which one keeps freezing?” John asked, casting a critical eye around the sick bay. The lights were carefully calibrated to provide a spectrum that closely matched the sun’s rays, but the more days Roger spent on the ship, the more he couldn’t help but notice the slight off-ness of the light. Perhaps it was the flicker that was supposed to be imperceptible but whatever the reason, he was left at the end of the day feeling slightly sick and headachy.

 

“Umm,” Roger replied, tapping at the screen on his desk. “It’s that one over there by the nanoparticle prep station…ah, yeah, Module 9.”

 

John went over to examine the computer module while Roger followed him, feeling slightly baffled as John quickly keyed into the diagnostic subsystem. He couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under his friend’s eyes and he honestly did not envy his burden of responsibility on this mission. “You look tired, Deaky, we are barely a month in, you know.”

 

John sighed and rubbed the side of his nose. “You wouldn’t believe the number of little fires I have had to put out so far. We caught so much stuff in testing and QC before the ship launched…but a lot doesn’t show up until she flies and of course the chief engineer has to be the one to oversee anything affecting the core operating system, so I can’t delegate _anything_.” John paused and swiped through several screens of code. “Here is the problem. Easy to find really, just a coding error. Be a few tedious hours to fix, though.”

 

“Hey, it can wait a bit, huh? Not really a vital system. Why don’t you take a thirty minute break?” Roger could see John about to refuse. “Actually, as Chief Medical Officer, I order it for your health. And when it comes to medical issues, I outrank you.” He tried his best stern look.

 

John rolled his eyes but glanced at the screen for a moment before stretching his arms over his head and sitting down on a sick bed. “I guess a little break won’t hurt. Hey, Rog, remember when you forged that doctor’s note for Freddie so that he got out of all his math credits in undergrad?”

 

Roger laughed. He hadn’t thought of that particular incident in years. It was pure luck that most of his undergrad escapades hadn’t ended up on his official record or there would be no way he would be standing here today. “Yeah, ol’ Fred was never one for math. The hardest part about that was keeping Brian and Veronica from turning us in.”

 

“Those were the good old days, weren’t they?” John mused reflectively. “Running around uni, just the six of us. Who would have ever guessed half of us would end up in space, tracking down new worlds?”

 

Roger smiled at the memories. He could feel the distant rumble of the engines through the soles of his shoes and it struck him that they were hurdling further and further away from those sun-soaked memories at a speed that was nearly unimaginable. He felt a strange prickling sensation in the nape of his neck. “What will you miss most about Earth, John?”

 

John raised an eyebrow. “We are only gone a year. Five months to the planet, two to explore and five back,” he recited.

 

Roger rubbed his hands together. Somehow he couldn’t seem to shake a strange feeling that it wouldn’t be quite so simple. “I know that…still, a year is a long time. What will you miss?”

 

“Well, my family, of course. Robert’s only a baby…I am afraid I will miss his first steps and all that,” John replied after a moment of thought.

 

Roger watched John’s expression. He was staring off into the middle distance with a small, wistful smile. Roger wondered what it must feel like to love someone like that. “You really love them, don’t you? Freddie, Veronica and Rob?”

 

John nodded and glanced sidelong at Roger. “I know that the government only encourages multi-unit families to reduce population without having to impose the child limits that led to the Great Riot…but I can’t imagine what it must have been like back then when they only had one wife and one husband. There is so much more love to go around, truly.”

 

Roger felt himself getting a little misty. He wasn’t normally one to get too emotional, but seeing the reserved John speak about his family with such quiet fervor was enough to move the hardest heart. “It’s beautiful, John.”

 

“You and Brian and Mary aren’t upset about it, right? We didn’t mean to split up The Gang by going off on our own. It just kinda happened.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Roger burst out. All these years spent as friends and John was still sometimes the shy kid he met in introductory physics. “I was the best man at your wedding! I am Rob’s godfather. I am so glad for you guys and I know that the others feel the same way.”

 

John ducked his head and blushed a little. “So what will you miss the most?”

 

“God…decent liquor. I smuggled a few cases of beer on board, you want one?”

 

John broke out laughing before accepting a bottle with a shrug.

 

***

 

The soft but omnipresent hum of the ship’s engines filled the quiet room. It was a noise that grew familiar enough that one no longer even heard it anymore. It was amazing the things one could get used to, like the halting jerk as the gravity generator kicked in between sections and the slightly flat flavor of the hydroponic vegetables and herbs.

 

Brian sighed and wiped the screen clean of some of the more fruitless formulas. He wished he could also erase the ones that showed a foreboding sort of promise. Eight months into the trip and he was finally making some progress on the problem that he had spent his life’s work on. Now that he saw the shape of it, he wished he had never had any successes at all.

 

“Do you ever take a break?” Roger asked him seriously from where he was curled up in a chair in the corner of Brian’s cabin, desultorily reading through NMR-spec reports from the prospective planet’s surface, ostensibly to determine if the planet was safe for human habitation.

 

“Whereas you never start working,” Brian jibed back, reflexively.

 

“Ha ha, very funny. I am reading these damn reports, aren’t I? Although, I almost suspect that it is just busy work for me. Pretty healthy bunch once we cleared up that mutated influenza...” Roger studied Brian carefully and Brian could see his brow creasing with puzzlement. “But you always seem quite occupied…”

 

Brian sighed again and looked at Roger over his templed hands. He was going to have to come clean with the ship’s crew eventually, might as well practice with Roger. “Do you know why I am on the ship?”

 

“Well, a theoretical astrophysicist…and a damn good one too. I mean, we are in space.”

 

Brian smiled humorlessly. “ _Theoretical_ , is the point. A ship is a very practical place. I have little to offer in the way of operating this thing or fixing it if anything goes wrong. The computers ably manage most of what goes on around here…even those reports you are working on have already been completed by some program.”

 

“So why are you here?” Roger asked, falling into Brian’s little thought experiment. “This mission was not without risk. Why did the ICPH chose to risk one of humanities best minds by sending him light years from Earth? Was it just in case?”

 

Brian did not acknowledge the compliment with false modesty. They both knew that Roger’s statement was the simple truth. “What do you remember from your history of science class in uni?”

 

“Not a lot,” Roger admitted sheepishly.

 

“Well, through a series of strange, fortunate discoveries, mankind’s technically knowledge has far outstripped its more philosophical endeavors.” Roger hid a smile as Brian started with his professor voice. “We have efficient fusion, we have near-light speed travel, we have artificial gravity…all without any real understanding of the theory behind them.”

 

“You’ve been working on that?”

 

“Yes, under the direction of the ICPH. This mission was rushed. No-one wanted a repeat of the Great Riot.” Brian shook his head. The world did not need to know exactly how close it had been to that.

 

“What did you learn?” Roger queried, tension growing in his voice.

 

“Right before the mission was scheduled to begin, I had a breakthrough. It wasn’t enough to fully understand the problem, but enough for us to decide that it would be best for me to continue to work on the theory on board the ship.”

 

Roger must have noted the deliberate obfuscation in that statement but chose not to pursue it. “What did you learn?” he demanded, his voice low.

 

“In simplest terms, all measurements are relative to the velocity of the observers. So a moving object appears shorter to a stationary observer. The magnitude of the effect increases as one approached the speed of light. And—” Brian paused and looked for any dawning understanding on Roger’s face. “And time would seem to pass more slowly on a speeding vessel than a stationary one.”

 

He saw the wheels turning in Roger’s mind as he worked out the implications of the statement and the dawning look of horror.

 

“How long?”

 

Brian looked down at his desk and did not answer.

 

“How long, Brian?” Roger repeated, panic rising in his voice.

 

“Seventy years. Maybe longer. I am still calculating how much the time we spent on the planet effected things and it will depend on how quickly we decelerate,” Brian said grimly.

 

“Seventy years,” Roger gasped. “But everyone we know...”

 

“Yes. The world asked us for a bigger sacrifice than any of us realized when they sent us off into space.”

 

“John—John was so pleased with the new planet.” Roger gazed off absently for a moment. “We have to tell him, Brian.”

 

“I know. I am just not sure how.”

 

***

 

The sky was that impossible sort of blue that at the same time seemed to portend the grey and blustery storms of winter and make one believe that colder weather would never arrive. A golden blaze of fire broke the expanse of sky and made the gathered crowd catch their breath.

 

The return of the ship had been promised in song and legend for years, but for the people watching it finally land, it seemed like something out of a dream or some long lost myth. Nonetheless, a perceptible thrill of excitement ran through the crowd watching, for them the great ship loomed all too real blocking the sky from view.

 

It had been decided that the crew members’ family should be the first to great them, so as John descended from the belly of the ship, the first sight of Earth he had was of a tangle of familiar-strange faces, turned up to him with infectious grins. A man, who carried himself with bold confidence, broke off from the group and walked up to him.

 

“Welcome back, Grandda.” The man’s wide, liquid brown eyes looked back at him, topped by Veronica’s hair. He was about the same age Freddie had been the last time John had seen him and about the same age he was at the moment. The eyes took him back and the memory hit him like a blow to the heart.

 

***

 

A soft, salty breeze stirred John and Freddie’s hair as they lay together on the beach. The sky was heavy with billowing grey clouds that seemed to perch right on the water. In the distance, Veronica frolicked in the surf, roundly pregnant and disregarding of the cold. The call of sea birds distracted from the sounds of the encroaching city.

 

“Ronnie and I wrote you a poem. In the sand,” Freddie said with laughter under his breath. A drop of sea spray clung to his dark, plush eyelashes and caught the last of the setting sun through the thick clouds, glittering wetly.

 

“My little artists,” John said fondly, forgetting for a moment that he was destined to leave this behind in less than a year. “What does it say?”

 

Freddie quoted softly,

 

“ _Though you go far from here,_

_our heart will follow_

_and miles called years_

_will fail to slow_

_the day we take your hand again_.”

 

John slowly caressed Freddie’s hair. It was dark and impossibly dense. John watched with wonder as his pale fingers were swallowed down into the depths of it, the strands slipping over his knuckles like quicksilver. He captured the other man’s mouth for a slow kiss and the juxtaposition of the heat of him and coolness of the day made shivers skitter across the surface of his skin.

 

“Sap,” he whispered against Freddie’s lips.

 

Freddie’s eyes sparked with amusement. “You love it,” he whispered back.

 

The beach was deserted, unusually so, perhaps due to the hour or the chill. Whatever the reason, the two lovers took full advantage of the privacy, exploring each other with a leisurely completeness. When Veronica joined them, they welcomed her onto the plaid and threadbare blanket just as the three of them would soon welcome their first-born son.

 

The cyclic crash of the waves onto the sand was never-ending and made it seem as if time and the moment were endless as well, stretching on into the darkening evening boundless and hospitable.

 

***

 

John fell to his knees in front of the young man who had Freddie’s eyes and who called him grandda. He barely felt Brian and Roger’s steadying hands on his shoulders. He called out to the sky, an inarticulate, wordless cry that nonetheless felt as though it could penetrate the barrier of time separating him from the faces that were so clear in his mind’s eye.  
  
 _Don't you hear my call though you're many years away?_  
 _Don't you hear me calling you?_  
 _Write your letters in the sand,_  
 _For the day I take your hand_  
 _In the land that our grandchildren knew._  
  
 _Don't you hear my call though you're many years away?_  
 _Don't you hear me calling you?_  
 _All your letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand._  
 _For my life still ahead, pity me._

 


End file.
